وآتوا اليتامى أموالهم ولا تتبدلوا الخبيث بالطيب ولا تأكلوا أموالهم إلى أموالكم إنه كان حوبا كبيرا
Wa ātu'l-yatāmā amwālahum wa lā tatabaddalu'l-khabītha bi'l-ṭayyib, wa lā taʾkulū amwālahum ilā amwālikum, innahū kāna ḥūban kabīrā
"Give the orphans their property. Do not exchange what is good for what is foul. Do not consume their property by adding it to your own. This is a great sin."
The first verse recounted humankind as coming from a single root and set the tie of kinship beside mindfulness of God. The second verse begins from the place where that tie breaks most easily: the property of a child who has lost his father.
I record this as my own reading; its ground is the order of the two verses. Whether a tie really exists shows itself where the other party cannot defend himself. The sūra enters at exactly that point.
A usage the lexicographers record is worth noting: دُرَّة يَتِيمَة (durra yatīma) — "an orphan pearl", that is, a pearl with no match, standing alone. When the word is used of a human being it means a small child who has lost his father.
And the picture the word carries explains the subject of the verse: the orphan is the person with no one standing behind him. His property is in his hands, but he has not the strength to protect it.
A detail of the word order must be recorded: the verse does not say "give property to the orphans"; it says "give the orphans their own property". The pronoun belongs to them. What is at issue, then, is not a gift but a restitution.
The root ب-د-ل: to put something in the place of another. Form V (tafaʿʿul) here states a deliberate and gradual operation.
In the classical commentaries the following is widely transmitted as the concrete referent of this sentence: that the guardian would take what was good in the orphan's property and put in its place what was bad in his own — like taking the fat sheep of the flock and leaving the lean one. I relate this explanation in the language of "it is transmitted".
And the choice of the pair khabīth / ṭayyib must be recorded. Both words are used in the Qurʾān in a material and in a moral sense alike: ṭayyib — clean, pleasant, lawful; khabīth — foul, corrupt, forbidden. The sentence therefore names a transaction of property in the language of morals.
In the classical commentaries the following sense is drawn from this preposition, and I relate it as it is transmitted: to consume the orphan's property by adding it to one's own, so that it can no longer be told apart. The matter, then, is not only the consuming but the mixing itself — what can be called to account so long as it stands apart becomes invisible once it is merged.
And this record must be read together with the measure given in al-Baqara. At al-Baqara 2/220 the balance between keeping the orphan's property separate and mixing it was treated, and what was recorded there was: fa-ikhwānukum — "they are your brothers", but wa'llāhu yaʿlamu'l-mufsida mina'l-muṣliḥ — the one who corrupts is told apart from the one who sets right. I rely on that treatment.
Read together, the two verses give this measure, and I record it as an observation: to live in common is free; to keep a common account is not.
حُوب — root ح-و-ب. The lexicographers explain the word as sin, guilt, grave offence. The root's sense of "need, distress" is also recorded.
The word occurs only here in the Qurʾān. Other words for sin are used in the sūra (ithm, sayyiʾa, dhanb); here a word that occurs only once is chosen.
I record this as an observation and draw no firm conclusion from it: it can be said that the choice of word carries an emphasis, but how much of that is meaning and how much the harmony of the verse-ending cannot be determined.
And the pattern of the verse-ending is again formed with kāna: innahū kāna ḥūban kabīrā. The same structure as kāna ʿalaykum raqībā in the first verse.